Just made a quick walk cycle for the character "Tubby" that comes with Anime Studio. Don't quite know why. I've just always wanted to. :D There's definitely room for improvement, so if anyone wants to play with it, have at it!
lwaxana, this characer is excellent for a personal growing in the animation process.
I would:
1) Fix the right leg curve of the joint.
2) Give more balance to the arms bending the hands and producing a more swiming arc. Arms are so riggid.
3) Add some secondary movements like some stomach bounce for example.
4) Peace a bit the walk giving him more sensation of weight.
it's very good. Maybe (if I would have more time) I would put up a little more the legs between steps, right now he is shuffling, but that's not necessarily bad. And break the elbow a little between steps, when the arm is going back, that way it would look less rigid.
Anyway, take count I'm being hypercritical. Your animation is very good as it is.
Thanks for the comments and suggestions! :D I tried them out here, and also tried to simulate some rotation of the torso by moving the shoulders and hips through the step. I still want to work on the stomach motion. It looks like an alien is about to emerge from there. ;) I'll post the updated .anme after I work on it a little more.
Genete--on your fourth suggestion, do you mean to slow it down?
Thanks! :D
Last edited by lwaxana on Thu May 20, 2010 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
That looks really nice with the rotation on the chest and hips. The only obvious thing to me is the way the arms 'snap' as they reach their furthest forward and back. They should slow in and slow out at that point when they start to move the other way.
You could loosen up the hands a little too.
The belly bounce is almost there it just looks like the first and last frames of the cycle don't quite match which causes the snap again.
The first thing I did in AS was a walk with this character. It would be interesting to see it again. I will try and find it
Richard Williams' book The Animator's Survival Kit has something about a bouncing belly. It's on page 156, about Counteraction.
The basic gist is that the volume of the belly doesn't change but that the volume gets displaced and lags behind the body movement. So, if the body starts to move up again then the belly is still going down. Notice in the book (I assume you have it, if not then get it) how the volume isn't changed (the ball and the triangular area always have the same surface).
Also notice how big people walk in real life. They don't have a big, flowing stride like slim people but a very carefull one to preserve a precarious balance. They don't jump up energetically because they're too heavy for that. Big people don't have a "spring" in their step, they more or less glide. They put down their feet carefully (and quite flatly, not a straight impact on the heel) because the impact on their feet and knees is more severe than that of light weighted people.
To loosen up the arms, you can use the wave principle.
In animation, there's the principle of lead and drag, resulting in an animation pattern called the wave principle. It simply means in plain English that body parts don't start moving , stop moving or change direction at the same time.
The arm chain would start at the shoulder, that's the lead action. As the shoulder starts moving forward, the upper arm is still moving backward, then it is dragged forward by the shoulder. The lower arm follows later, the wrist/hand even later. An object in motion is unwilling to change direction, and the lower down the chain you get, the later the change in direction will occur.
At the most forward point of the movement, the elbow will bend forward a bit to allow the lower arm to drag its forward motion a bit. It should be done subtly, but it will defenitely break the stiffness.
The arc of the arm should not be a straight pendulum curve (stiff), but a figure eight pattern (loose).
A drag action will also occur on the head. When the body moves upward, the head will drag a bit and tilt downward a bit, and vice versa.
The main lead action for all walks occurs in the hip section by the way.
